The great number of architects in Lorenzo’s latter years shows how actively building was carried on. The works executed at that time by Simone del Pollaiuolo Cronaca cannot be chronologically arranged. But when it is considered that at Lorenzo’s death this talented man was thirty-five years old, and was soon after fully engaged on public works, it is easy to see that he must long have been in active occupation.[187] The Servite convent of the Annunziata, the interior of which was his work, has been entirely altered. On the foremost slope of the hill of San Miniato he built the Franciscan church, for which a rich citizen—Castello Quaratesi—had left to the guild of Calimala a large sum in 1449.[188] This man had intended to decorate Sta. Croce with a suitable façade, but the scheme came to nothing because he was refused permission to place his coat of arms on the building. The church of San Francesco recalls the abbey of Fiesole. Tradition relates that Michel Angelo admired the simple grace of this church (La bella villanella), in whose immediate neighbourhood he spent some time when in difficulties. The sacristy of Sto. Spirito, a very elegant octagon, was not finished till later; Cronaca’s cupola fell in when the scaffolding was taken away.[189] A great deal of building went on in the immediate neighbourhood of the city. The church of Montoliveto, which, from its cypress-crowned hill on the left bank of the river, overlooks city and country, was finished in 1472. Older conventual buildings were enlarged and churches beautified. This was the case above all with the before-mentioned Dominican nunnery of Annalena in the quarter of Oltrarno, and the monastery of the Jesuates at San Giusto, whose church contained numerous works of art. The building of the façade of Sta. Croce was contemplated in 1476, as is proved by a decree of the municipality, which assigned for the purpose a sum to be collected from backward taxpayers. It was reserved for our own times to witness the execution of the project, after a sketch said to be by Cronaca. The court in front of the Servites’ church, and the colonnade on the square in front of the church, opposite the Foundling Hospital and imitating its portico, are both attributed to Antonio da Sangallo, and, if not begun in Lorenzo’s lifetime, must at all events have been built soon after his death.
Lorenzo had obtained from Innocent VIII. leave to use the convent gardens—where they were larger than necessary—for the construction of new streets and squares, and the widening of old ones. Space there was in plenty, for after all the building in the sixteenth century the great number of convents was further increased in the days of the later Medici by many new ones on a large scale. One of the new streets of that time—behind the Servites’ church—bears the name of Via Laura, after Lorenzo. Quieter times and increase of riches naturally strengthened the taste for building, and fine houses with their extensive courts and gardens called for adornment with antiquities and works of art. The palace, the gardens, the villas of the Medici were the richest; but they were not without rivals. The Strozzi, Acciaiuoli, Soderini, Capponi, Tornabuoni, Sassetti, Benci, Ricci, Valori, Alessandri, Pucci, Rucellai, Pandolfini, and many others ordered works of painting and sculpture for their homes and villas as well as for their chapels in the city churches. The house of the Martelli, the garden of the Pazzi, the villa of the Valori at Majano, and many others, were full of antique statues. In the palace of Niccolò da Uzzano might be seen the antique porphyry lion which Lorenzo greatly admired,[190] and which still adorns the staircase of the house. Artists, too, had many fine things. In the house of the Ghiberti, for example, was a precious sculptured marble vase which the famous artist Lorenzo Ghiberti was said to have received from Greece.
CHAPTER XIV.
SCULPTURE AND PAINTING.
The first man to whom Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici gave a commission for a great piece of sculpture, after they became independent, was Andrea del Verrocchio. He was a disciple of Donatello, and had worked with the master in San Lorenzo. This was of itself a recommendation to the Medici, who found him also employed by their relatives, the Tornabuoni. Vasari rightly observes that a certain severity is even more prominent in his works than in those of his master, because he lacked the creative versatility of the latter and tried to supply by study what Nature had denied him. In bronze-casting he displays a delicacy which recalls the goldsmith. The monument to Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici was finished in 1472. Like Donatello, Verrocchio restored damaged antique sculptures for the Medici house and garden, and executed for Lorenzo some bronze busts which were sent to Matthias Corvinus. For the palace of the Signoria he furnished a bronze statue of David, now in the Podestà Museum, not very remarkable either in conception or execution. His shortcomings, however, are amply atoned for by the charming bronze group over the fountain in the courtyard, representing a boy, half-fighting, half-playing with a dolphin, full of easy grace that seems almost above this artist. It was a commission from Lorenzo, and intended for the fountain in the court at Careggi, but placed in its present position by Duke Cosimo. Verrocchio’s capabilities in more serious work were shown in Florence by the group of our Lord and the apostle St. Thomas, which in 1483 received the most prominent place in front of the church of Or San Michele—and in Venice, by his equestrian statue of Colleone. Though the former, with its broken and angular drapery—recalling the Umbrian school—does not exactly conform to the rules of plastic art, it is penetrated with a depth of feeling that renders it highly attractive; and in the latter the defiant self-conscious bearing of the old condottiere brings his position and character vividly before the eye. Among Andrea’s marble works is a relievo, very naturalistic, representing the death (in her confinement, September 24, 1477) of Francesca Pitti, wife of Giovanni Tornabuoni; it was intended for her tomb, and is now to be seen in the palace of the Podestà.[191]
Equally intimate with the Medici, if not more so, was Antonio del Pollaiuolo, whose family connections linked him to the school of Ghiberti. In his sculptures the goldsmith is more closely discernible than in those of Verrocchio. They both, while painting and sculpturing, continued to work as goldsmiths, and Pollaiuolo was regarded in his native city as the first master of this branch. ‘A man unique in his art,’ wrote the Signoria, after his death, to the ambassador in Rome, ‘well deserving that we, who are wont to value praiseworthy qualities of whatever nature, should honour his memory by supporting his heirs.’[192] Lorenzo’s high esteem for him is shown by passages in his letters to Giovanni Lanfredini. The silver helmet presented in 1472 to the conqueror of Volterra was by Pollaiuolo; so was also the oft-copied medal representing the criminal attempt of the Pazzi, more valuable in a historical than in an artistic point of view. No great works of sculpture by him are known in Florence, the labour of his latter years being chiefly devoted to Rome, where his masterpiece is the tomb of Pope Sixtus IV. in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in St. Peter’s, and where he died in 1498.[193]
As Verocchio and Pollaiuolo passed from goldsmith’s work to sculpture, without abandoning altogether their original occupation, so Benedetto da Majano rose from artistic cabinet-work to sculpture and architecture. The monument to Giotto in Sta. Maria del Fiore—a marble bust in a richly ornamented circular frame—was, according to the inscription, erected by the citizens in 1490.[194] The bust of Antonio Squarcialupi, in the same church, is only ascribed to Benedetto by a later tradition, which the merit of the work by no means justifies.[195] The erection of both monuments was, doubtless, due to Lorenzo. Benedetto’s greatest work was a pulpit, executed for a Florentine citizen—Pietro Mellini—of whom he also made, in 1474, a most natural and expressive marble bust, which he signed with his name. The pulpit is decorated with reliefs, representing scenes in the history of St. Francis of Assisi—the richest and finest work of the kind since that of the Pisani. In imitation of Ghiberti, the reliefs are freely handled; landscapes and backgrounds in perspective are introduced, but with a careful subordination of the pictorial elements which afterwards became too prominent.[196] In Sta. Maria Novella is Benedetto’s monument to Filippo Strozzi. The artist who built the palace, of which the owner lived to see only the beginning, also erected in his beautiful family chapel this mausoleum, which was begun before his death.[197] Above the black marble sarcophagus, in the middle of a panel under an arch delicately carved in arabesques, is a large medallion of the Virgin and Child, in white marble, surrounded by a rich garland of flowers and foliage; at the sides are four angels in adoration. The charm of expression and delicacy of treatment recall Antonio Rossellino and Desiderio da Settignano. Filippo’s bust, preserved by his descendants in the Strozzi Palace, shows the marked, expressive features of the energetic man. Benedetto’s capabilities in decorative sculpture are displayed in the marble doors of the audience-chamber in the palace of the Signoria, where he worked, as has been mentioned, with his brother. Time and ignorance have not spared this fine work, and the statuette of the youthful Baptist, which once adorned it, is now in the Uffizi collection.
The two finest works of Mino da Fiesole which adorn the Benedictine Abbey-Church, were executed about 1470; one represents the artist’s own time, the other the earlier days of Florence. They are the monuments of Bernardo Giugni, and of the Marquis Hugo. The former, and his services to the State have been already mentioned. The figure of an elderly man, in his long robe, with his hands crossed on his breast, lies on the sarcophagus; between Ionian pilasters is a semi-circular niche, in which is a figure of Justice in relief, and in the lunette is a medallion profile of the deceased.[198] The other monument, finished in 1481, is richer, but very like the first in general arrangement. It is a token of gratitude from the monks to their founder—the half-mythical Marquis who, in Emperor Otto’s days, is said to have come from the neighbourhood of the Elbe and the Havel—the ‘great Baron’ of the ‘Divine Comedy,’ whose arms are quartered on the armorial bearings of the chief Florentine families.[199] His effigies rest on a low couch on the top of the sarcophagus, two genii support shields at his head and feet; there is a group in relief, representing Charity, and in the lunette a medallion of the Virgin and Child. As in all Mino’s sculpture, careful workmanship is manifest in the accessories. This attention to detail and richness of ornamentation long remained a characteristic of the Florentines, who carried it to Rome and Naples. In the early decades of the following century, when the revolution in monumental style, introduced chiefly by Michel Angelo, was beginning to make its way, and ornamentation was compelled to take refuge in painting, admirable works in the old manner were raised in Florence. Such were the tombs of Oddo Altoviti, and Pier Soderini, both by Benedetto da Rovezzano; also the monument to Cardinal Luigi de’ Rossi, cousin of Leo X., said to be by Raffaello da Montelupo. With regard to ornamentation, a distinct position is held by two monuments, companions to each other, which tradition ascribes to Giuliano da Sangallo—those of Francesco Sassetti and his wife, in their family chapel in Sta. Trinità.[200] They consist of black marble sarcophagi, decorated with rams’ heads, and standing beneath an arch adorned with antique arabesques and medallions, and a frieze, in the middle of which are medallion heads of the husband and wife, surrounded by small figures representing ceremonies of heathen worship. They are clearly the work of an artist well acquainted with classical antiquity; who, in this case, has certainly made rather a strange use of his studies. That Giuliano da Sangallo was expert in the use of the chisel and thoroughly understood the working of the Fiesolian stone, employed in this monument, is shown by his famous mantelpiece in the Gondi Palace, which served as a model for that by Benedetto da Rovezzano in the Casa Rosselli del Turco, near Sant’Apostolo.[201] Tuscan sculptors of ornamental work, particularly those from Fiesole, Settignano, Rovezzano, and the neighbourhood, found occupation all over Italy, like the architects and sculptors from the Lake of Como, the maestri Comacini, in the Middle Ages. In our own days the Tuscans still show great ability in working both marble and macigno (the greyish stone of the neighbourhood of Florence) in which they produce objects of beautifully delicate workmanship.